Your browser is outdated and this site may not display properly.

Robert Batten

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Author

Title Announcement: Blood Capital

I have a special announcement. For sometime I've been posting on here about my science-fiction novel and the publishing process it is going through. Up until now, I've been referring to it by the working title Human Resources. Well, I'm finally ready to reveal the publication title — it's going to be released as Blood Capital next year! Choosing to move away from the working title was a hard decision. I was (and still am) fond of the title Human Resources. It was understated and linked back to the corporate dystopia, as well as the way humans are treated in the novel. However, despite that, there were signs it would make the book harder to sell. Some of the issues were:

Human Resources is not a unique title. There weren’t any other science-fiction books I could find with that title, but hundreds of business books. That meant searching for the book could be difficult.

It confused people. Right throughout my campaign I encountered people who thought I’d written a non-fiction business manual. This can be addressed to an extent with a good cover, but I still had people misunderstand after I started including a cover image of a person with a big sword.

It’s out of genre. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but by switching it to a title that is more recognizably from the genre of the book, it makes it stand out to people who read that genre.

It was for these reasons, in discussion with my publisher, that we decided to search for a new title. We settled on Blood Capital. This title isn’t as subtle, but ties it firmly in the genre. It also links back to the corporate dystopia, the treatment of humans in the world, and (bonus) the city the novel is set in. Work is underway on the final cover image, and I can’t wait to share the outcome of that. In the meantime, Inkshares have posted a (short) video of Matt Harry (Head of Story Development at Inkshares) talking about Blood Capital.